And the Wolverines weren't intimidated by facing one of the Big Ten's most prolific offenses Saturday, producing four more takeaways to push their season total to 23 in a 48-21 victory.

("Most prolific" against awful teams, sure, but whatever.) Michigan is now second only to Cincinnati in takeaways -- the Bearcats have 25. The theory around these parts has always been that there's very little a defense can do that consistently produces turnovers other than rush the passer. Michigan's done that extremely well -- 9th in sacks at 3.43 -- but even three and a half sacks a game can't explain 25 turnovers with almost half a season left to go. Michigan's remarkable turnaround* on defense is partially due to fortune. Against teams that can pass block, things will look considerably more grim.

One potential mitigating factor: despite having Mike Hart, Michigan has already lost eight fumbles via a combination of backups with oily hands, Mallett-related snap pratfalls, and the occasional blindsided quarterback.

*(And it has been pretty remarkable. Since Oregon, the first string D has given up 0, 9, 16, 10, and 7 points. Purdue's TD drive was five yards; Penn State had a field goal drive that started at the Michigan 35.)

Hard to understand why he would be after whipping up on Purdue and Joe Tiller 48-21, but University of Michigan football coach Lloyd Carr was particularly cranky Saturday afternoon, especially toward our own beat writer, John Heuser.

At one point Carr accused John of asking too many questions, which would be understandable if, you know, the point of a press conference wasn't to ask questions.

First off, I did not hear Carr say that Heuser was asking too many questions. It was more like “Is there anyone else who has some questions?” after Heuser machine gunned nine consecutive questions without stopping during the press conference–possibly more. Maybe Heuser ought to just take his turn when asking questions instead of dominating the press conference scene . . .

This is accurate, as anyone who viewed MLive's own video of the PC knows. The reason Heuser got cut off is because he 1) asked a million questions all right in a row and 2) pressed Carr for injury information he was not going to give out like four times straight. If Carty is mystified about Heuser's treatment it says more about Carty and the media's thin skin than Carr.

Baseball? Yeah. A commenter pointed out this ESPN article from the summer that slipped by my radar. A uniform start date goes into effect this year, rosters are going to be much smaller, and scholarships can be no smaller than 0.25. The former will definitely help Northern teams; everyone seems crabby about the last two changes.

Etc.: The Michigan library has put together a Bo exhibit that starts the 19th.